ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
There were no nagging preservationists when, in 1920, city officials decided to widen Charles Street on Beacon Hill. Wreckers simply lopped off the front 10 feet of the houses on the river side of the street. The old photo shows the facades of many of the houses being rebuilt after the massacre. The new photo reveals that a great deal of further rebuilding has occurred since then. Like so much of what we think of as historic Boston, this side of Charles...

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
There were no nagging preservationists when, in 1920, city officials decided to widen Charles Street on Beacon Hill. Wreckers simply lopped off the front 10 feet of the houses on the river side of the street. The old photo shows the facades of many of the houses being rebuilt after the massacre. The new photo reveals that a great deal of further rebuilding has occurred since then. Like so much of what we think of as historic Boston, this side of Charles Street is almost entirely a 20th-century invention. The exception is the Charles Street Meeting House, the cupola of which can be seen above the housetops at the right of both photos.

Designed in the Federal style by a noted architect, Asher Benjamin, it was bl:lilt in 1807 for a Baptist congregation. The site it stood on had just been carved out by developers, who had cut off the top of nearby M t. Vernon Street to fill the riverbank. In the early years, the Baptists could and did immerse their devotees directly in the Charles, which flowed past the back door. In 1920 the church, then housing a black congregation, was scheduled to be demolished for the street widening, but members and neighbors raised funds to move it the necessary 10 feet. It became Albanian Orthodox, then Unitarian Universalist, and most recently, in 1982, was renovated for shops and offices by an architect who lives in the tower.